Roy Bland Quotes

In your day, the Circus ran itself by regions. Africa, satellites, Russia, China, South East Asia, you name it: each region was commanded by its own juju man; Control sat in heaven and held the strings. Remember?” “It strikes a distant chord.” “Well, today everything operational is under one hat. It’s called London Station. Regions are out, lateralism is in. Bill Haydon’s Commander London Station, Roy Bland’s his number two, Toby Esterhase runs between them like a poodle. They’re a service within a service. They share their own secrets and don’t mix with the proles. It makes us more secure.

Roy Bland’s not redbrick,” Smiley said loudly. “He was at Saint Antony’s College, Oxford, if you want to know.” Heaven help me, it was the best I could do, thought Smiley. “Don’t be silly, dear,” Martindale snapped. Smiley had bored him: he looked sulky and cheated; distressing downward folds had formed on the lower contours of his cheeks. “Of course Saint Antony’s is redbrick; it makes no difference there’s a little bit of sandstone in the same street, even if he was your protégé.

Smiley’s feelings towards Roy Bland had at that time been ambivalent. Recalling them now, he decided they still were. A don had spotted him, Smiley had recruited him; the combination was oddly akin to the one that had brought Smiley himself into the Circus net. But this time there was no German monster to fan the patriotic flame, and Smiley had always been a little embarrassed by protestations of anti-Communism. Like Smiley, Bland had no real childhood. His father was a docker, a passionate trade-unionist, and a Party member. His mother died when Bland was a boy. His father hated education as he hated authority, and when Bland grew clever the father took it into his head that he had lost his son to the ruling class and beat the life out of him. Bland fought his way to grammar school and in the holidays worked his fingers, as Toby would say, to the bones, in order to raise the extra fee. When Smiley met him in his tutor’s rooms at Oxford, he had the battered look of someone just arrived from a bad journey.

Lot of damned tripe about Circus personalities, matter of fact.” “Which personalities?” Jim ducked that question. Tripe about who was on the up staircase, he said, who was on the down. Who was next in line for Chief: “ ‘How should I know,’ I said. ‘Bloody janitors hear it before Brixton does.’ ” “So who came in for the tripe, precisely?” Mainly Roy Bland, said Jim sullenly. How did Bland reconcile his left-wing leanings with his work at the Circus? He hasn’t got any left-wing leanings, said Jim, that’s how. What was Bland’s standing with Esterhase and Alleline? What did Bland think of Bill’s paintings? Then how much Roy drank and what would become of him if Bill ever withdrew his support for him? Jim gave meagre answers to these questions. “Was anyone else mentioned?” “Esterhase,” Jim snapped, in the same taut tone. “Bloody man wanted to know how anyone could trust a Hungarian.